John Edwin Mason: Documentary, Motorsports, Photo History

Motor Sports & Diversity in C-ville Weekly

As couple of weeks ago, Kyle Daly, a reporter for C-ville, a weekly newspaper, interviewed me in connection with an article that he was writing on racial diversity in motor sports.  The story, "Speed is Colorblind," came out yesterday, and it's terrific.  You can read it here.  (By the way, it's accompanied by several of my photos, one of which you can see below).

 

 

"Speed is Colorblind," C-ville, 11-17 July 2011.

 

As many readers of this blog already know, I'm working on a long-term documentary project called Democracy of Speed.  It combines history, interviews, and photos to look at the ways in which drag racing has been unusually welcoming of women and members of racial and ethnic minority groups.  You can read about Democracy of Speed, here, and see photos from the project, here.

How to Shoot Like an Historian

An historian with a camera?  That's a bit like a fish with a bicycle, isn't it?  After all, a camera isn't a quill, a pencil, or a microfiche reader.  It's not a computer or even an audio recorder.  It isn't, that is, a tool of the historical trade.

Don't get me wrong.  Many historians make use of photos that other people have made.  For decades, we've studied, probed, read, scrutinized, and reflected upon photographs, often in highly sophisticated ways.  Photos are documents, and historians have analyzed them in the same ways and with the same caution that we’ve used diaries, deeds, and death certificates.

But actually using a camera -- shooting -- comes as naturally to most historians as boxing does to gerbils.

 

 

Eastside Dragway, Waynesboro, Virginia, 2006.

I'm a boxing gerbil, an historian who shoots.

Over the last decade, I've worked on two long-term research projects in which a camera has been an essential part of my professional practice.  My book, One Love, Ghoema Beat:  Inside the Cape Town Carnival, which was published last year, combines words and photos to examine the role that the carnival has played in creating and sustaining a sense of "coloured" working-class identity, in South Africa.  Democracy of Speed is on-going research into the dynamics of race and gender in grassroots motorsports in the American South.  Here, too, the camera has been as important as the audio recorder and the archive.

Both projects grew out of little more than a desire to make beautiful pictures in interesting places, but they quickly evolved into serious historical research.  In the case of Democracy of Speed, what I saw in the photos that I made at the race track was so unexpected that it drew me into an exploration of an unknown past.  On the other hand, a past that I already knew informed the decisions that I made about how to photograph the Cape Town Carnival.  As both projects evolved, the photos I was making continually suggested new questions and new lines of investigation.

 

 

Senior Drum Major, Pennsylvanians Crooning Minstrels, Cape Town, South Africa, 2008.

The idea of using the camera in scholarly research isn't anything new.  Photography has been an important part of anthropology since birth of the discipline, in the nineteenth century.  For a century and a half, modern science, from botany to astronomy, has also relied heavily on the collection and interpretation of photographic evidence.  More recently, visual sociology has become a recognized subdiscipline.

On the face of it, it makes sense that some researchers use cameras and some don't.   After all, both the social and physical sciences are concerned primarily with the here and now.  Research involves people and things that can appear before a camera’s lens, even if that thing is light from a distant galaxy, many thousands of light years away.  Historians, on the other hand, are concerned with the past, and you surely can’t shoot that.

 

John Bowles with car driven by his brother, Larry.  Eastside Dragway, Waynesboro, Virginia, 2004.

Well, yes, you can.  It might seem trivial, but it’s worth noting that every photograph is a record of the past.  The moment of exposure might have been two minutes ago or 20 years.  Whichever you choose, that moment is now history.  Every time a photographer shoots, he or she has shot the past.

I like this point, and I'm constantly reminded of it when I look at photos that other people have made.  But it's not particularly pertinent to what I'm going to say about my own photography.  There are at least two additional and far more important grounds for objecting to the notion that photography has no place in the historical trade.

First, photography can raise questions and suggest topics for historical investigation that might otherwise have gone unspoken and unnoticed.

Second, photos of the present can shed light on the past, helping us understand it in deeper and more complex ways.

 

 

Senior Drum Major, Fabulous Woodstock Starlites, Cape Town, South Africa, 2010.

How do the photos that I make shape the history that I write?

Sometimes not at all.  In writing Social Death and Resurrection:  Slavery and Emancipation in South Africa, I drew a small fraction of my evidence from sketches and prints, but none from the many photos I made in South Africa on research trips.  A book that I’m writing now about popular music and popular politics in Cape Town, during the struggle against apartheid, will analyze and interpret the photos of others, not my own.  Where images are concerned, both projects are utterly conventional.

As I've said, however, making photographs and thinking in pictures have been absolutely essential to One Love, Ghoema Beat and Democracy of Speed.  I have an aversion to abstractions, so let's get down to brass tacks.  We'll start with some photos from One Love, Ghoema Beat.

* * *

When I photographed the "board" and banner that the Atlantis Community Entertainers were parading through the streets of central Cape Town on die Tweede Nuwe Jaar (the second of January) of 2009, I sensed that I had captured something significant, even if I wasn't sure exactly what it meant.  (By the way, you can click directly on any of these photos to see larger versions.)

 

 

Atlantis Community Entertainers, Cape Town, South Africa, January 2009.

The "board," a standard that all carnival troupes carry when on parade, represents theme that the troupe has chosen for the year.  This year's theme was very obviously Barack Obama's victory in the 2008 American presidential election.  The troupe's red, white, and blue color scheme emphasized the connection.

The photos that I made of the Atlantis Community Entertainers showed what was happening, but couldn't, by themselves, explain it.  A troupe from a deeply impoverished suburb of Cape Town was celebrating the election of an American president.  But why?

 

 

Atlantis Community Entertainers, Cape Town, South Africa, January 2009.

The answer lies in the history of South Africa's "coloured" community, the community which created and sustains the carnival.  Like African-Americans, their ancestors were slaves.  Again like African-Americans, they are a permanent minority.  Of diverse ancestry and neither white nor black, in the South African scheme of things, they have been scorned as racially degenerate half-breeds, without a meaningful history or culture.  During slavery and for a century and a half afterward, they were oppressed by the white-dominated state.  By the late nineteenth century, they had begun to identify with African-Americans and, in particular, to adopt aspects of African-American popular culture.  Black Americans, they believed, had successfully adapted to modernity and to a world of whites.  Although democracy has now come to South Africa, many in the coloured community feel marginalized by the vastly larger and politically ascendant African population.

Is it any wonder, then, that they celebrated the son of a white American mother and a black African father who has been elected president of the most powerful country on earth?

 

 

Hollywood Superstars, Cape Town, South Africa, 2009.

But life is complicated, wonderfully so.

The Entertainers' board prompted me to look for others that might be just as revealing.  I suppose that I expected to find more Obama.  After all, we were only weeks away from his inauguration as what these Captonians surely saw as America's first coloured president.  Instead, I found something else.

On the same day and in the same parade, another troupe, the Hollywood Superstars (note the name) carried a board that paid tribute to a more local hero, Nelson Mandela.  As much as coloured identity in South Africa acknowledges a sentimental tie to the United States, local roots, connections, and interests matter much more.  Paying tribute to Mandela was a way of asserting the fundamental South Africanness of the community.  It simultaneously expressed the hope that Mandela's inclusive sense of what it means to be South African would prevail ultimately against more racially exclusive conceptions that would leave coloureds (along with whites and Indians) outside of the charmed circle.

 

 

Pennslyvanians Crooning Minstrels, Cape Town, South Africa, 2009.

This photo, made on the same day as the others, is one I'd been hoping to make for at least three years.  I wanted a picture of a troupe marching past the slave lodge.  It would be a way of connecting the carnival's present to its past:  the Cape Town Carnival grew out of celebrations marking the end of slavery in the nineteenth century.  But I didn't imagine that I'd be able to make an image quite as thickly layered as this one.

In it, we see the Pennsylvanians Crooning Minstrels (again, note the name) and the slave lodge.  But we also see so much more.  The new South African flag fills nearly half the frame, and, for this troupe, performs much the symbolic function as the board honoring Nelson Mandela.  The slave lodge -- which, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was indeed a place where slaves were housed -- has been transformed into a museum.  A large sign on an exterior wall advertises an exhibition commemorating the 30th anniversary of the death of Steve Biko, one of the great heroes of the South African freedom struggle.  It's merely a coincidence that the exhibition overlapped with the carnival, but the sign is nevertheless central to the meaning of the photograph.  Biko advocated Black Consciousness, a ideology which redefined "black" to embrace all victims of apartheid -- Africans, coloureds, and Indians.  His presence adds texture to a photo which captures an expression of identity that is both wholly coloured and wholly South African.

* * *

What I already knew about the history of the coloured community and the carnival informed the choices that I made while shooting One Love, Ghoema Beat.  The photos, in turn, suggested new avenues of archival and oral research.

The situation was different, when I began work on Democracy of Speed.

* * *

I drove over to Eastiside dragway on a lark.  I planned to spend a relaxing day making pictures of fast cars, smoky burnouts, and the cast of characters that loved them -- mostly dumb rednecks, I figured.  (Like a lot of people, I had my prejudices about drag racing.)  What I ended up seeing and shooting surprised, perplexed, and challenged me.

There were plenty of fast cars and lots of smoke at the track, but the people that I photographed weren't what I expected.  Many of the racers and fans were black.  A significant number were women and girls.  The rednecks were pretty darn smart.  And everybody got along just fine.  The photos I made contradicted everything that I thought Iknew about southern working-class culture and about motorsports.  I had to learn more.  At first my tool was the camera.  Later I added an audio recorder and archives.

Let's look at what the camera saw at Eastside, beginning with the dynamics of race, before moving on to gender.  In both discussions, my words and photos are engaged in a conversation, commenting and reinforcing each other, but offering distinct perspectives.

 

 

Eastside Dragway, Waynesboro, Virginia, 2002-2010.

It turns out that African-Americans have been racing at Eastside Dragway -- head-to-head against whites -- from the day that it opened for business in 1965.

 

 

Eastside Dragway, Waynesboro, Virginia, 2002-2010.

The number of black racers was small, at first, but it's still remarkable that nobody tried to bar them from the drag strip. It was a time, after all, when "Whites Only" signs were only just coming off the walls of waiting rooms, restaurants, and restrooms in Virginia.

 

 

Eastside Dragway, Waynesboro, Virginia, 2002-2010.

Blacks did sometimes sense hostility from other racers, but nobody told them to go home and, in general, as one black driver has put it, "everybody was right decent."

 

 

Eastside Dragway, Waynesboro, Virginia, 2002-2010.

Today, upward of a quarter of the racers and fans at Eastside, on any given Friday night or Sunday afternoon are African-American.

 

 

Longtime owner Al Gore (seated) and friends, Eastside Dragway, Waynesboro, Virginia, 2002-2010.

Eastside is far from unique.  No motorsport (and few sports of any kind) has been more open to members of racial and ethnic minorities and to women than drag racing.

 

 

Eastside Dragway, Waynesboro, Virginia, 2002-2010.

In southern California, where organized drag racing began, black, Latino, and Asian men have been racing against white men ever since the 1930s, a time when baseball, for instance, was still rigidly segregated.

 

 

Eastside Dragway, Waynesboro, Virginia, 2002-2010.

The friendships formed at the track can be deep and lasting.  A common passion, especially in something that the mainstream culture knows little about and tends to scorn, can bring people together in powerful ways.  Seeing these race track friendships in action helps me to understand how they might have functioned nearly 50 years ago.  The track was and is something of an oasis, where the laws and social norms of the outside world didn't always apply.

 

 

Eastside Dragway, Waynesboro, Virginia, 2002-2010.

For many years, African-Americans have served as race officials, at Eastside and all over the country.

 

 

Eastside Dragway, Waynesboro, Virginia, 2002-2010.

 

 

Eastside Dragway, Waynesboro, Virginia, 2002-2010.

 

 

Eastside Dragway, Waynesboro, Virginia, 2002-2010.

Grassroots drag racing rarely attracts many fans, other than friends and relatives of the racers.

 

 

Eastside Dragway, Waynesboro, Virginia, 2002-2010.

 

 

Eastside Dragway, Waynesboro, Virginia, 2002-2010.

Symbols of what might be called "white consciousness" are often visible at the track.

 

 

Eastside Dragway, Waynesboro, Virginia, 2002-2010.

I've seen no signs that this consciousness, if that's what it is, is linked to racial hostility.  Not at Eastside, and not at any of the dozens of other tracks that I've visited.  There's certainly no hostility in the photo above.  Gretchen Wilson's 2004 hit song, "Redneck Woman," celebrated a white working-class subculture, but it did so with warmth and humor, not aggression.

 

 

Eastside Dragway, Waynesboro, Virginia, 2002-2010.

This photo is about hipster irony, not racial animus.

 

 

Eastside Dragway, Waynesboro, Virginia, 2002-2010.

Unlike stock car racing, which was born and bred in the South, organized drag racing emerged in the racially fluid culture of mid-twentieth-century southern California.  While racism and segregation weren't absent, they didn't dominant social relations as they did in the South.  As early as 1952, the National Hot Rod Association [NHRA] -- then and now the most important drag racing sanctioning body -- insisted that there were no racial or ethnic barriers to joined the organization or to participating its races.

 

 

Eastside Dragway, Waynesboro, Virginia, 2002-2010.

The NHRA's racial ethos wasn't universally followed.  Some southern drag strips barred African-Americans.  That was never the case at Eastside.  By the end of the 1960s, the sport everywhere was open to all men.

* * *

Things were different where women were concerned.   As late as the 1970s, women who wanted to drag race faced significant resistance from men.  They were entering "a male domain," as Virginia Scharff has put it.  And, to an extent, that's still the case.  While women and girls are now an accepted part of the racing community -- at Eastside and throughout the country -- most participate as fans, crew members, minor officials, or "window dressing."  Many male racers remain ambivalent about women drivers.  Much of this past and all of this present is visible to the camera.

 

 

Eastside Dragway, Waynesboro, Virginia, 2002-2010.

The transformation of gender relations wasn’t easy, and it hasn’t been complete.  But it happened.  Drag racing, a macho sport that too many people insist on associating with delinquent, working-class white men, led the way among motorsports in accepting women as full participants.  The irony is wonderful, and it’s part of what keeps me going back to the track.

 

 

Bunny Burkett (right), Eastside Dragway, Waynesboro, Virginia, 2002-2010.

Bunny Burkett’s career embodies many of the contradictions that surround women in drag racing.  On the one hand, few racers of either gender have been as successful as she.  She's won hundreds of races and has long been one of the most sought-after match racers on the east coast.  In 1986, she won the International Hot Rod Association’s Funny Car championship, marking her as one of drag racing’s elite.

 

 

Bunny Burkett, Eastside Dragway, Waynesboro, Virginia, 2002-2010.

On the other hand, she, like many successful female drag racers of her era, was "sexualised," as Jim Luikens once wrote, "in the sense that [her] looks, way of dressing and appearance became part of what [she was] 'offering' the sport as a sales proposition.”  In the mid-1970s, for instance, she toured as part of Tom “Smoker” Smith’s all-female Miss Universe Pro-Stock Circuit of Drag Racing.  Before the races, the drivers paraded before the crowd wearing mini-skirts and go-go boots.

 

 

Eastside Dragway, Waynesboro, Virginia, 2002-2010.

Racers like Burkett paid the dues for the thousands of younger women who have followed them.

 

 

Eastside Dragway, Waynesboro, Virginia, 2002-2010.

Today, women and girls participate in drag racing by the thousands, from the grassroots to the highest professional ranks.

 

 

Eastside Dragway, Waynesboro, Virginia, 2002-2010.

 

 

Eastside Dragway, Waynesboro, Virginia, 2002-2010.

 

 

Eastside Dragway, Waynesboro, Virginia, 2002-2010.

 

 

Eastside Dragway, Waynesboro, Virginia, 2002-2010.

It remains true, however, that most women at the track aren't there to race.

 

 

Eastside Dragway, Waynesboro, Virginia, 2002-2010.

More likely, they're serving as crew members for husbands and boyfriends.

 

 

Eastside Dragway, Waynesboro, Virginia, 2002-2010.

Others work as officials.  One of hidden facets of motorsports is the vital role that women play in keeping everything moving.  Without women officials and track workers, every motorsport would grind to a halt.

 

 

Eastside Dragway, Waynesboro, Virginia, 2002-2010.

 

 

Eastside Dragway, Waynesboro, Virginia, 2002-2010.

 

 

Eastside Dragway, Waynesboro, Virginia, 2002-2010.

Helmets are an important form of self-expression.  It should be obvious that the motorcycle racer in this photo is a woman.

 

 

Eastside Dragway, Waynesboro, Virginia, 2002-2010.

Helmets can also capture the ambivalence some men feel about women and girls participating in a sport that they feel is theirs.

 

 

Eastside Dragway, Waynesboro, Virginia, 2002-2010.

Sexualized images of women are common, if not pervasive.

 

 

Eastside Dragway, Waynesboro, Virginia, 2002-2010.

 

 

Eastside Dragway, Waynesboro, Virginia, 2002-2010.

Lose the race, lose face.

 

 

Eastside Dragway, Waynesboro, Virginia, 2002-2010.

Most men embrace the macho character of the sport.  In a subculture that celebrates its outlaw image, being bad is good.

 

 

Eastside Dragway, Waynesboro, Virginia, 2002-2010.

Despite whatever ambivalence male racers feel, women continue to be central to track operations.

 

 

Eastside Dragway, Waynesboro, Virginia, 2002-2010.

They offer moral and tangible support to men who race.

 

 

Eastside Dragway, Waynesboro, Virginia, 2002-2010.

They worry.

 

 

Eastside Dragway, Waynesboro, Virginia, 2002-2010.

And they win. 

The girl and woman racers at Eastside are, like their counterparts at tracks all over the country, part of the post-Burkett generation.  All admire her as a role-model and respect her as a pioneer.  Because she and others had paved the way, none of the women and girls that I've interviewed had any hesitancy, when they first came to the track, about racing against males or any doubt that they would be accepted as drag racers.

Eastside Speedway and hundreds of other American drag strips are places where men and women and boys and girls compete against each other regularly, fiercely, and unselfconsciously.  Lingering traces of male resistance can be found in humor and symbols, but it’s rarely overt and never effective.  Men have their cartoons.  Women have their trophies.

* * *

Neither One Love, Ghoema Beat nor Democracy of Speed would exist if I hadn't picked up a camera.  Both project combine words and images to explore the past and present of fascinating social institutions.  The camera and the photos that I made with it served a number of purposes -- drawing me into the past, suggesting new lines of investigation and new questions to ask, offering hints about how people thought and acted in the past, and, crucially, motivating me to keep looking and learning.

In these projects, photography and historical research are complementary, each enriching and deepening the other.

* * *

Note:  I presented a paper based on this post to a history department seminar, at Lynchburg College, Lynchburg, Virginia, on 16 February 2011.  I'm very grateful for the invitation and for the chance to articulate some of my thoughts about history and photography.

Photographs copyright John Edwin Mason, 2002-2010.  Text copyright John Edwin Mason, 2011.

Car Culture, Continued: The SBRA Bracket Finals, 2010, at Eastside Speedway

Driving over the Blue Ridge Mountains to Eastside Speedway, after having been away for several months, feels like going home -- in an odd sort of way.  My attachment to the place has nothing to do with family (although I've made a lot of friends there, over the last few years).  Instead, it's all about photography.  Eastside is where I was reborn as a photographer, after having put down my cameras for nearly thirty years.

Since 2002, I've been working on Democracy of Speed, a documentary project about the culture of motorsports in America.  It focuses on Eastside, the track where I first realized how deeply blacks, Latinos, and women are integrated into the world of drag racing.  This was something I hadn't expected, aAnd it's something that distinguishes drag racing from every other motorsport.  In fact, I'd always thought that drag racers were a bunch of dumb rednecks.  (Forgive my language, but, in my ignorance, that's what I was thinking.)  Turns out, I was wrong on both counts-- they aren't dumb and they aren't (most of them) rednecks.

 

 

All photos copyright John Edwin Mason, 2010.  Click directly on any of the images to see much larger versions.

I was back at Eastside, a couple of weekends ago, for the annual Southern Bracket Racing Association (SBRA) finals.  It's a team event.  Over 200 racers representing several dragstrips in Virginia and Maryland descend on Eastside to determine which track will win the championship.

It was the first time that I'd been at the track since the Easter Sunday Funny Car show (another highly anticipated annual event).  In part, I was there to make some photos.  After spending the last few weeks shooting drag races on assignment, it was nice to be able to slow down, sling a Rollei TLR around my neck, and shoot some film.  Because, after all, square photographers are cool.

 

 

But the photography for Democracy of Speed is largely finished.  (You can see a gallery of images, here.)  Right now, I'm putting most of my energy into editing and talking to publishers.

 

 

So, I was able to spend a lot of time hanging out.  That's Susie, the wife of my friend, Larry, who's one of the best racers around.

 

 

The guy standing on the left is a member of the Steppe family.  His father and uncles have been racing at Eastside since the mid-1960s.  That is, they were racing at the track -- against mostly white opponents -- before the state of Virginia was completely desegregated.

 

 

I'm constantly fascinated by the ways in which drivers personalize their cars.

 

 

Fans watching the race.

 

 

A certain amount of friendly wagering goes on at these events.

 

 

A motorcycle racer and a friend wait in the staging lanes.

 

 

A four-footed fan.

By the way, Old Dominion Dragstrip took the team honors, going home with this year's championship.  Eastside's racers came in third.

SBRA Bracket Finals, Eastside Speedway: Three Days at the Races

Hundreds of drag racers (and their families and friends) turned out for the Southern Bracket Racing Association's championship finals at Eastside Speedway,in Waynesboro, Virginia, on 2 to 4 October.  This annual event draws the best racers from six small, grassroots dragstrips in Virginia and Maryland.  Tracks like these, and the people who race on them, are the foundation--the bedrock--of drag racing.

I was there to continue working on my book about the people and culture of drag racing, Democracy of Speed.  (Click directly on any of these photos to see larger versions.)

I made these photos with two medium format cameras, a fifty-year-old Rolleiflex and a twenty-year-old Mamiya 6.  They're great fun to use and produce the naturally square images that you see here.

I was worried about the turnout for the race.  Drag racing is an expensive hobby (none of the racers in these photos are pros), and many of the racers that I know well have been hurt by the recession.  Hours have been cut; clients have disappeared.

As it happened, the number of cars at the race was off only slightly from last year.  These racers have a real passion for the sport.  Where I saw the difference was in the number of spectators.  The grandstands were significantly less full than last year.

Here some of the faster cars line up for their turn to race, in the staging lanes.

This car is performing a burnout to clean and heat the rear tires.  The cleaner and hotter the tire, the better it grips the track and the quicker the car runs.

Friends and family members are always on hand.  Nobody races alone.

There are lots of cameras at any racetrack.

I'm not kidding when I say that drag racing is a family affair.  This girl's father is one of the best racers at Eastside.  Her grandfather, who's also a fine driver, has been racing at the track since the mid-'60s.

Race control.  No, the boy's not working.  But his mother (not seen) works the timing system, when she's not racing her motorcycle.

The rocks and dirt clods would come from the action on the "circle track" (a dirt oval, for stock car racing), not the dragstrip.  The oval is right next to the dragstrip.  I've never seen anyone hurt at the track, but remaining alert is good advice.

As I was saying, the grandstands weren't particularly full.

The racing went on well into the night.  The fans stayed.  Night racing is terrific.

Nights were chilly.  Ice cream was much more popular during the day.

The Legendary Bunny Burkett, Pioneering Woman Drag Racer

Dolly Parton. No doubt about it. If you were going to cast someone to play Bunny Burkett in a Hollywood movie about her life, Dolly would be your only choice.* Two legendary women, one that you’ve heard of, one that you probably haven’t.

Bunny and Dolly both grew up poor but proud in the mountains of Appalachia. Being smart, tough, hard-working, and ambitious, they both accomplished great things. And they share good looks, big hair, and, umm, certain other substantial assets.

You already know Dolly. Carol "Bunny" Burkett is one of the pioneering figures and most successful drivers in the history of drag racing. Last Wednesday, motor sports writer Jon Paulette and I interviewed her for an entry about her in the Encyclopedia of Virginia. (The article will appear late this year or in early 2010.)

 

Bunny Burkett, speaking to Jon Paulette and me, on Wednesday, 15 July 2009, in Fredericksburg, Virginia.  Photo by John Edwin Mason

When Bunny ran her first race--in 1964, at Old Dominion Dragstrip, in Manassas, Virginia--women drag racers were few and far between. Bunny told us that she and her husband Mo Burkett bought a bright red ‘64 1/2 Mustang on a Thursday and raced it on Friday. She won her very first race and never looked back, quickly emerging as the first truly competitive female drag racer on the east coast. In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, she established herself as one of the most popular drag racers in the country, traveling thousands of miles a year, from Canada to the Carolinas and from Nashville to Maine.

 

Bunny poses beside her second bright red Mustang, in the late '60s.  Publicity photo courtesy of Bunny Burkett.  (Click directly on any of the photos to see larger versions.)

Part of Bunny’s popularity stemmed from her participation in Tom "Smoker" Smith’s Miss Universe of Drag Racing tour. During the interview, Bunny remembered the tour with affection, calling it "a traveling circus." It was a hit with the fans, who liked the quality of the racing almost as much as the hot pants contests that the Miss Universe drivers participated in. "We would strut our stuff," Bunny said, and the crowds "would yell and clap and carry on...." Sounds exploitative, and it probably was. But drag racing is an expensive sport, and playing by Smith’s rules was one way that Bunny and the other women could stay in the game.

Bunny with the car that she raced in the Miss Universe of Drag Racing tour, in the late '60s and early '70s.  It's the same car that's in the photo above.  Publicity photo courtesy of Bunny Burkett.

By the mid-‘70s, Bunny was successful enough to move up to Funny Cars. In 1986, she was the International Hot Rod Association’s [IHRA] Alcohol Funny Car world champion, making her the first (and until 2008 she was the only) woman to win a championship in a Funny Car.

Bunny's championship-winning Plymouth Laser Funny Car, seen doing a burnout in '87.  Publicity photo by Steve Bell, courtesy of Bunny Burkett.

Bunny blazed a trail that many women racers have since followed. The Ashley Force Hoods of the world owe her and other female pioneers, such as Shirley Muldowney, Shirley Shahan, and Paula Murphy a tremendous debt. Bunny said that male racers never tried to prevent her from racing because she was a woman. "I must have sneaked under the radar," she told us. "For whatever reason, I was just totally accepted." That doesn’t mean that the men were happy to lose to her, something that they’ve always done on a regular basis. They "fussed when they lost," kicking their cars and throwing their helmets for having been beaten by a "girl."

The sanctioning bodies, such as the National Hot Rod Association [NHRA], were less welcoming than the male racers. As late as 1972, the NHRA was still issuing a "Ladies Driver Permit" to female racers. There was no such thing, of course, as a "Gentlemens Driver Permit."

Jon Paulette holdinga copy of Bunny's NHRA Ladies Driver Permit.  Photo by John Edwin Mason.

Bunny is certainly "the first lady of Funny Cars," but she won’t call herself the first lady of drag racing. That honor, she insists, belongs to Muldowney. By the time Bunny won her championship, in 1986, she said, Muldowney had "already opened the door. The door was not necessarily wide open, but I could slip through it."

In 1995, Bunny almost lost her life, during a race in Pennsylvania, when her opponent crossed into her lane, hit her car, and caused it to rocket off the track and into the woods at over 200 mph. Doctors told her that she’d never walk again, but, after 18 months of recovery and rehabilitation, she was back to racing her Funny Car. Since then she’s treated other setbacks, including two separate bouts of cancer, the same way she treated her injuries after the crash--with courage and determination.

 

Bunny and her Funny Car in action at Eastside Speedway, in Waynesboro, Virginia, on Easter Sunday, 2009.  Photo by John Edwin Mason.

Bunny said that the crash "made me the person that I am today. That’s what made me strong." It’s an experience that she tries to share with her many fans, who still come to see her race, collect her autograph, and buy a souvenir or two. "It’s like I pass along power and encouragement and inspiration. That’s what all of this is about now."

Bunny Burkett, a legend on and off the track.

[* I’m by no means the first person to suggest that Dolly’s perfect for the part. That distinction probably goes to Christine Montgomery of the Washington Times.]